Now let it be said that, the form of split-testing we’re after here is pure and simple A/B/C testing. That is, we’re only testing variations of entire pages – not slight variations within a page. To do that, Google’s Website Optimizer is more suitable.

So – there are several ways to split-test landing pages, but the most common (and simplest) way to do it is using a small .php script that will rotate between and redirect to a set of landing pages you specify. Wes Mahler over at Tracking202 wrote up a brief instruction on how to use their landing page split-tester, but some people are having some trouble getting it set up just right. So I figured I could explain it in a bit more detail here.

First, a simple visualization of how this works:

The T202 landing page rotator looks like this:

Note: The script also relies on having a dummy file called count.txt with write-permission located in the same directory on your server. You can create an empty file like this in Notepador your favorite text editor.

Ok, so let’s say we have 3 landing pages that we want to split-test:

We also have the split-testing (rotation) script in the same folder:

So we have:

www.example.com/lander_a.php
www.example.com/lander_b.php
www.example.com/lander_c.php
www.example.com/rotate.php
www.example.com/count.txt

Configuration

1. In the rotate.php file, modify the following lines so they match our landing page filenames:

$landingpage[1] = ‘lander_a.php’;
$landingpage[2] = ‘lander_b.php’;
$landingpage[3] = ‘lander_c.php’;

Save the file, and upload it to the server along with the count.txt file. Make sure count.txt has file permissions of 777.

1. In Tracking202: Go to Setup – #4 Landing Pages, and add each landing page there with its own name, e.g. “My1stSplit_LP_a” and so forth. Set the landing page URL for each of them to:
   www.example.com/rotate.php. Select the appropriate Aff Network and Aff Campaign for this page.
   
2. Also, add a separate landing page for rotate.php and again use www.example.com/rotate.php for its landing page URL. We will call it “My1stSplit_Rotator”.So we have now added 4 landing pages in Tracking202:
   3 for the actual landing pages we will test between, and 1 dummy that is really only the rotating script itself.
3. Now go to Setup – #6 Get LP Code and grab the code for each of the three landing pages. It should look something like this:
   
   Insert this code into the appropriate landing page file (at the bottom right before the </BODY> tag). Make sure to also grab the outbound PHP code for any outgoing affiliate links you have set up for that landing page as well.Note: we do NOT grab the LP Codes for the rotate.php page, as this really is not a landing page.
4. Now we need to generate the destination link to be used in our ads. Go to Setup -#7 Get Links. Select “My1stSplit_Rotator” and generate the link for it.It should look something like this:
   
   And this is our final destination URL to be used in our source of traffic, be it PPC ad or whatever.

What will happen now is that for every new visitor clicking our ads through our destination link, the next landing page in line will be shown. In Tracking202, the visits will be shown as visits to either:

My1stSplit_LP_a
My1stSplit_LP_b
My1stSplit_LP_c

Tip for Naming Landing Pages in T202

In Tracking202, give each of your landing pages descriptive names that remind yourself of the unique features of that page. By doing this, you can instantly see what landing page style works the best when looking at your statistics.

For example, I give mine names like “blueBG_noOptIn_redHeadline” to tell myself that the page I’m seeing statistics for is the one that has blue background, no opt-in form, and a red headline style.

Now get to tracking and optimizing for more profits!